Kinetic Contraptions: Build a Hovercraft, Airboat, and More with a Hobby Motor

Kinetic Contraptions: Build a Hovercraft, Airboat, and More with a Hobby Motor — page 4 — 2 Introduction iceberg Dozens of brilliant projects are possible with the low-cost low-tech components and building techniques described here so don’t stop with what’s in this book Bump it up a notch baby and create a truly original kinetic masterpiece to call your own But don’t spend any money on it I’d love to hear from you if you come up with something magnificent If it’s a truly original kinetic contraption masterpiece I’ll make you famous in the next book You can e-mail your ideas to me at information curtgabrielson com Happy tinkering Electromagnetic History and Accidental Science On April 21 1820 the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted was ﬁddling around with some parts he used to make electricity and magnetism demonstrations Among other things he had wires batteries and a compass Upon connecting a wire across a battery he was startled to notice a twitch in the compass which was laying near the wire This was arguably the most important discovery of the 19th century It was the ﬁrst direct connection observed between electricity and magnetism Up until that time the phenomena associated with these two areas while astonishingly similar in many respects were always thought of as separate Today all modern motors transformers tube-type video screens solenoids electromagnets and magnetic storage devices are made possible through our understanding of this link Even the electric lights you are using to read this are almost surely powered by a faraway generator a device which essentially uses magnetism in motion to create electricity We can learn two key lessons from Ørsted First it rarely pays to have your workbench too neat and clean you may miss the most important discovery of your time Obviously this is a message your parents must hear Second casual tinkering combined with careful observation can lead to great stuff So if either your science teacher or textbook gives you the message that science happens through a lockstep process in which trained professionals traverse a well-known road toward the next great scientiﬁc discovery you must stand and shout Balderdash A long list of earth-shaking history changing ﬁnds including among many others X-rays and radioactive decay small-pox vaccine Teﬂon matches penicillin polyethylene glass and DNA were stumbled upon by ﬁddling and tinkering all the while looking closely at what was happening

Kinetic Contraptions: Build a Hovercraft, Airboat, and More with a Hobby Motor — page 5 — Introduction 3 TIPS FOR USING THIS BOOK AND BUILDING GOOD STUFF (cid:128) The chapters Getting Started Basic Circuitry Mounting the Motor and Peripherals fill you in on the low-tech elements used to build the kinetic contraptions throughout the book You probably should at least skim those chapters first (cid:128) After that you don’t necessarily need to start at the beginning Jump right to the project that strikes your fancy (cid:128) The projects are divided into easy If you haven’t built much before start with the projects marked easy and work your way up and hard medium (cid:128) Look at all the photographs first and then if you need more information read the words (cid:128) You can learn valuable information by reading The Science Behind It section at the end of each project Many other raw science and engineering concepts are in the introductory chapters and the final chapter Exploring Motors

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